Personality and politics

I've talked about this several times. A new study finds a strong relationship between a person's politics and personality. Liberals are nicer than conservatives. Conservatives are more tight-assed than liberals.

"Conservatives tend to be higher in a personality trait called orderliness and lower in openness. This means that they're more concerned about a sense of order and tradition, expressing a deep psychological motive to preserve the current social structure ... (and)  liberalism is more often associated with the underlying motives for compassion, empathy and equality."

This makes me think so much of Jane Jacobs. If you didn't go out and read Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics when I talked about it before, do so now. It will change your life. Or not. It permanently changed the way I think about people.